Having a detailed understanding of your network infrastructure is essential prior to planning changes or further investment. Having a reference point in the form of a comprehensive and focused report is an extremely valuable asset. This our most frequently requested assessment.

Networks are always evolving to deal with the needs of a dynamic and growing business. As new technologies arrive, they must be assessed thoroughly prior to deployment. A Network Assessment gives you a state-of-the-art platform with which to accurately assess what your network needs as your business changes. Whether it’s rapid expansion, relocation, downsizing, adjustments or simply expanding capacity, a Network Assessment is an essential pre-requisite.

  • Ensuring the network fits the needs of your business
  • Providing; scalability, security and resiliency, allowing for future growth
  • Investment Protection alongside business growth
See Pricing & Brochure

How our Network Assessments work

The first step is to meet and liaise with the stakeholders over the full scope of the assessment. An initial meeting allows us to gain an informed level of understanding of the business, core practices, resources and aims. The goal is to establish the main focus of the assessment and what the business wants to receive from the process. During this process we formally agree on the key aspects and overall structure of the assessment to ensure the needs of the customer are met.

The assessment itself is framed around three core phases; Discover, Assess and Review.

During the Discover phase we look at how your network has been set up to cater for the business’ needs. How has the network been configured? What are the relationships between the physical devices? How is everything managed?

In the Assess phase we’ll be focusing on why your network is the way it is. Why has the network been set up in this way? Is the hardware and software End-of-Life? What are the benefits and risks of the configuration? What are the weaknesses that require improvement?

Finally, the Review phase, where we will compose and present a comprehensive report on your network. This will include a detailed breakdown of our findings and recommendations. We will present the report to stakeholders, going over the contents of the report and options for the future.

What we look for

The basis of a well-executed assessment starts with identifying the business goals that are driving the engagement. These goals can be any combination of addressing areas of weakness, capacity planning, an upcoming network refresh and / or a health check to ensure that you’re maximising your current investment.

For many of our customers, the assessment goes on to serve as a foundation which allows them to evaluate emerging technologies with increased confidence. Where they can bring value, how they can be integrated and how they will impact the environment, providing a better user experience.

Once the business goals are reviewed, we dive deeper into the technical elements surrounding standardisation, as well as rationalising the resources that are in play. This starts to form a design with the right pieces laid out in a clear and concise manner. The flow of the project then blends right into aligning best practices. Used as a reference point, best practices can help demonstrate the depth of optimisation achieved within the environment.

Benefits

Reduce costs – quickly identify potential savings on your network

Increase ROI – plan long term investments to extend the life and use of your existing infrastructure

Network Optimisation – enhance application performance and staff productivity

Improve security – be pro-active, preventative measures to combat evolving security threats

Scale efficiently – designing a modular network that’s flexible, robust and prepared for future requirements

Strategy – helping you prepare a comprehensive plan for the future

Discover

Review Strategy and Network Architecture with stakeholders

Review existing documentation

Review Authentication, Authorization over network devices

Network device discovery

Physical mapping

Management protocols (SNMP, NTP, SSH, HTTPS, SYSLOG) & Backups

Data Collection using Span ports, NetFlow and SNMP access

Physical Network devices inspection view on-site

Assess

Information analysis

Hardware and software End-of-Life/End-of-Support status

Identify issues and level of risk respectively

Review

Deliver Network assessment documentation

Deliver report with findings and recommendations

Present/review assessment report with stakeholders

Collaboration through Design Workshops

people looking at documents

What you get

Our team experiences many different networks in multiple industries on a regular basis. We also engage directly with the leading vendors in their respective sector(s). This broad net of information allows us to look at your network from multiple angles. What you get is a vendor agnostic team providing an impartial outside perspective catered to your specific needs.

We engage the customer regularly throughout the process. It is not in our mind set to assume. We prefer to ask and gain clarity to ensure all sides are pointed in the same direction.

Delivering balanced results that speak to both the business leaders and technology leaders of the company is of paramount important to us. Our eHealth Network Report starts with clearly outlining the previously agreed upon business and technical goals of the engagement. This is then followed by an introduction to the Tesrex team working on the project.

Executive Summary

An Executive Summary is aimed at the business side of the house. Our Executive Summary is internally reviewed by a business focused individual as a pre-emptive check to ensure it’s not encumbered with overly technical information. The information here should outline the issue, its impact to the business and recommendations to move past these obstacles.

Recommendations Summary

A Recommendations Summary which is focused towards the technical staff. Our team will provide a rolled-up summary of the various findings from a technical perspective. Each recommendation can be explored further for details and screenshots showing the finding in action. This allows the internal team to segment the findings to various team for review per the organisational structure.

All of our findings, including both summaries are wrapped up into our final comprehensive report.

The Report

Our Network eHealth Report provides comprehensive insight into your network. Our reports are built around a pre-defined structure designed to cover all the bases. The report will feature the customer’s specific focus points as defined in the original scope.

Using vendor best practices as a baseline and taking into consideration the original scope, our reports typically include:

  • LAN & WAN design – looking for aspects such as; Hierarchy, Modularity, Resiliency, Flexibility and Implementation
  • Other design aspects – Wireless LAN, BYOD, Internet Edge, DMZ, Data Centre, Networking, Remote Access, IP Telephony, Security, QoS etc. (and their implementation)
  • Identification of traffic profiles, trending and top talkers
  • Identification of ethernet bandwidth utilisation, errors, broadcasts and multicast levels
  • Identification of applications, protocols and unknown network traffic
  • Spanning tree
  • Overlay technologies
  • Multicast
  • IPv6
  • Tunnelling technologies
  • Routing & Redistribution points; optimal routing
  • VLAN, VLAN trunking & VTP
  • Configuration Consistency & Backups
  • Naming conventions
  • Network management & monitoring tools
  • Review of security risks identified
  • Conclusions & recommendations

After the final report is delivered, it will be presented to the stakeholders. This is an opportunity to go through the findings with our consultants and get our independent feedback on what to do next.

If you’d like to see a sample report please get in touch with us.

What comes next

Sitting down to review the findings naturally opens up more questions. This is where we really start to collaborate with a series of Design Workshops. These sessions are driven based on the priority order for the findings which need to be addressed. Our Design Workshops naturally blend into roadmap review and updates which keeps all sides of the business pointed in the same direction.

Our team truly enjoys participating in these discussions and working closely with our customers in order to get these initiatives off the ground and across the finish line. We’ve found that our customers get a lot of value from the relationship by allowing our team to perform discovery and exploration for future planning.

The end result is an optimisation of the budget whilst ensuring the technologies you bring-on are the best fit for your organisation.

Want to learn more?

Let us explain our Network Assessment further to you. We can answer questions over email or arrange a call. Reach out today!